Drum Roll Please.... Cover Reveal...

A while back I announced that the long awaited sequel to The Last Knight, The Forever Queen was going to be released on the 23rd of April 2015. Now I am very pleased to reveal the cover for the new book.

Drum roll, please...

Their love story spanned over a thousand years, now Cara and Lance return in 'The Forever Queen', where they will face greater dangers than they could have imagined, and a heart-breaking decision that could change their lives forever. 

(Not the official blurb! ;) )

Add it on Goodreads or follow me on twitter @NSDorrington for more updates.

And let me know what you think of the cover in the comments!

A little something special

So, today is six months since my Dad passed away. It seems almost impossible that it's been that long.

 

I wanted to write a post today in his memory, but  I was struggling to know what to write. To be honest, I feel like I've already said what I can say.

 

Then I was thinking about one of the last conversations I had with my Dad face to face - and it was about The Last Knight. It hadn't been long published and I had been quietly shocked that Dad actually really liked it. Not just 'my daughter wrote it so I have to like it' but honestly, really liked it. According to Mum he read it cover to cover three times or more between it's release and when he passed away.

 

But I digress. In this conversation I asked him who his favourite character was (expecting him to say Lance, or Cara, or Wyn) and he surprised me by saying Percy. Who I have to admit is probably my favourite character too.

 

So just for you Dad, a little Percy scene that I wrote a while back and I never planned on seeing the light of day. It's just a bit of silly fun, but I hope everyone has as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

 

The foil crinkled in his hands as he turned it around. The bright colours on the front made it hard to imagine this was some kind of food. He turned it again and shook it. The contents rattled.

Percy glanced up at Merlin. “Are you sure this is food?”

“Yes, Percival,” Merlin sighed. “It’s food. They just – do things a little differently here.”

The bag popped slightly as he opened it and the smell of some kind of fried goodness rose up out of it. He breathed in. He glanced into the bag and found a pile of thin, crisp bits of what looked like fried potato. But why were they cut so thin? He sighed in disappointment. He wanted meat, and lots of it, slow roasted over an open fire pit, dripping in grease. He wanted vegetables, also swimming in grease, but big chunks of them that he could stab with his knife. Not these strange, thin little bits of nothing.

And he was hungry, damn it. Of course, according to Gwain and Lancelot, he was always hungry. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t hungry when he was sleeping, or fighting. Just – the rest of the time.

The bag was almost too small for his big hand as he reached in for one of the ‘crisps’. It did smell good, he couldn’t deny that.

Lancelot was laughing from across the table. “Just eat it already. It’s not going to change no matter how long you stare at it.”

Percy glowered at him. It was all right for Lancelot. He seemed to have fitted into this new world quite easily, but the whole place still felt strange to Percy. The clothes were stiff and uncomfortable. He missed his armour. He felt naked without his armour. And there was stone everywhere, the forests he loved were gone, swallowed up by cities that seemed impossibly big. As for the people, he found them hard to believe. Why, just a few moments ago he’d seen a man come into the room in front of a woman, and not hold the door open for her. Unfathomable. He’d considered challenging the man for the affront, but he didn’t think Gwain or Lancelot would approve. Besides, the man had looked so small and weak it wouldn’t have been a very fair fight.

He sighed and looked back down at the thin piece of potato in his hand. He wasn’t sure he liked this new world one little bit.

With a final sigh of resignation he shoved the ‘crisp’ into his mouth and crunched down. His eyes widened in surprise as flavour flooded across his tongue, salty and fatty. Damn, that was good!

He demolished the rest of the packet in a matter of seconds and reached for another, then a third.

He only stopped when he heard Lancelot and Gwain laughing at him. He shot them a dirty look. Let them laugh.

Maybe this new world wouldn’t be so bad after all…

I have a mortal enemy – He’s called procrastination.

So, in just the last day or so my wonderful Muse has decided to make a reappearance (I think he’s been on a long extended vacation). Brilliant news because I’ve been struggling to write more than a couple hundred words a day.

Unfortunately, with the reappearance of my Muse comes my mortal enemy and the enemy of any writer. Procrastination.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Isn’t writing this blog a form of procrastination? Shouldn’t I be busy scribbling away wrapping up the glorious and thrilling conclusion to the sequel to THE LAST KNIGHT?

Well yes. Exactly.

But it’s tricky see, because I’m not just wasting time. (Honest! I swear I’m not).

The social media are essential to my marketing. I don’t have some huge, wealthy publisher to pay for my marketing. I have to do it all myself and the cheapest, easiest form of marketing is social media. So you see, when I’m on Facebook it’s work. No. Seriously, it is. Stop laughing.

And then there’s Twitter. Oh Twitter how I both loathe and love you. It should be so easy to just throw out a few tweets, a few #hashtags. A little witty comment here or there. But I’m a writer – I LIKE words – and 140 characters does not give me nearly enough words!

Of course, there is also this blog, which mocks me when I don’t post often enough.

And whilst I’m engaging in these fun and thrilling activities my Muse is tapping his foot and getting impatient, threatening to take another long vacation if I don’t get my act together.

So I better go and get writing. I’ve got a great scene to write about…wait, can’t tell you. Spoilers! You’ll just have to read the book. One day. If my Muse doesn’t quit on me before then.

 

Coming Soon: The Last Knight sequel has a title at last – Woo hoo. THE LAST KNIGHT is getting a new sexy cover – Woo Hoo.

Post-Publication Blues

All right. So I admit it. After all the stress and craziness over getting The Last Knight published I got kind of lazy. I had put so much time and energy into getting the book ready to go, and doing the blog tour and all the rest of it that when it was over I was a little lost. I honestly didn’t really know what to do with myself.

And this blog suffered as a result. I don’t think I could face trying to put down in words exactly what it was like to finally have my book out there.

I’m still not sure that I can find the words. It’s been a rollercoaster of a ride but it’s been worth it.

So what’s happening with the book now? Well, it’s not been an overnight bestseller (like that was going to happen anywhere but in my dreams) but it has been better than I expected. I honestly just expected my family and friends to buy it. That hasn’t been the case. It’s not sold a huge number of copies, but it is steady progress.

And most importantly people are enjoying it. A current 4.5 star rating on goodreads.com. Positive, encouraging reviews. And people I know reading it and telling me that they can’t put it down. What better comment is there than that?

But the question that’s been plaguing me for the past couple of weeks is ‘what now’? Where do I go from here?

Well the first big news is that I am going to be releasing The Last Knight as a paperback. E-readers are great, but not everyone has one and I want to make the book as available as I can. Plus there is the pure vanity side of it that I just really want to hold a copy in my hands. It’s a longer, slightly more involved process than the e-book publishing was, but I am still hoping to have it on sale by the end of the summer.

The second news is that I am knuckling down and working on the sequel. I’d always half planned on writing a second book – I love Lance and Cara too much not to tell more of their story. Plus anyone who’s read the book knows the ending isn’t exactly a happily-ever-after. I don’t have an exact publication date just yet – but the hope is to have it out sometime around Christmas, or the new year.

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has helped or supported me over the last few months. I couldn’t have done it without you. I’d like to say that I’ll stop talking about the book so much now – but you know that’s not going to happen.

For now, Lance and Cara are waiting, I have their next story to tell.

The Last Teaser...

So it’s getting real now, people. Just over a week to go until THE LAST KNIGHT hits the shelves.

Nine days to be exact.

Nine days. Wow, that’s a scary thought. Emotionally, it’s been a crazy rollercoaster ride over the last couple of months. I’ve gone from incredibly excited to feeling sick with fear and worry. And I doubt that’s going to change in the next week.

I’ve had days where I am so excited to get this book out there – to see what people think. And I’ve had days where I think I’ve made some huge, crazy mistake.

But what’s kept me going along this path has been the overwhelming support of the people around me. Friends, family, people I barely know,  who are still supporting the launch of this book. They have all made it possible for me to follow through on the promise I made on the spur of the moment back at the beginning of April.

Spur of the moment it might have been, but it’s still the right decision. Panicky feelings aside. This is the right choice for me. Because being a writer for me was never about making money or being famous. It was about telling some stories that are fun and entertaining, and hopefully touch people in some way. I don’t have to have a publisher or an agent to do that.

So this week, seeing as we are getting so close to release day – just a teeny, tiny snippet of a teaser, from about midway through the book. It might give a little something away, but it’s not too spoilery.

 

My fingers tingled with static electricity building in the air. My heart hammered in my chest.

I turned the corner and stopped dead, like I’d hit a solid brick wall.

At the far end of the corridor was a big glass case with a suit of gleaming armour. I could have blamed the overhead light for the way it glowed, but I’d have been lying. Perhaps to anyone else it looked like a regular display, but not to me.

I edged forward, my feet like lead weights. The glass case grew closer, and I could feel Lance just one step behind me.

There it was in front of me. A huge broadsword hung on a set of supports. The hilt was bound in leather, turned black with age, and a blood red stone was held in place on the pommel by a metal griffin, so perfectly moulded that it almost looked alive, its eyes tiny chips of ruby. The blade was unmarked and undamaged, as flawless as the day it was forged.

Excalibur.

 

Chapter Twenty-One, THE LAST KNIGHT

Read, enjoy and share!

Not Long Now!

So another Friday has rolled around, and it is now only 17 days until the release of my first novel. Wow!

It’s strange. When I first started on this journey, when I first decided I was going to self-publish, it felt like I had so much time ahead of me to plan and work, but the time has flown by and suddenly in just over two weeks my first novel is going to be on sale.

It’s a scary, exhilarating feeling! There are still parts of me that are terrified. I’m scared that people won’t like the book – that perhaps I have jumped the gun and published THE LAST KNIGHT before it’s really ready. I’m worried that even if it is good, it simply won’t sell – that no one will ever hear about it.

But that said I have been incredibly lucky to get more support than I could have ever expected. Not just from my family and close friends, but from everyone around me. Friends who have gone out of their way to spread the word for me – to try and get this book out there in the public eye. Their support is invaluable. The lovely Sharon Johnston gets particular thanks in this regard.

For this week’s teaser I’m going to just give you the ‘cover blurb’, the synopsis that is hopefully going to make people want to read the book:

Seventeen-year-old Cara Page knows what mark she's going to get on her English test next week. She knows in three days her history teacher is going to be late because his car broke down. She knows she's going to give the new boy a nose bleed on his first day.

She knows because every night she dreams of the future, and every day those dreams come true.

Now she's dreaming of a boy, and a future that can't be real. Because if it is, then everything she thought was myth and legend is actually true, and there is an evil coming that will tear the country apart.

Lance Filwer is a boy with secrets of his own, and a past full of mistakes he can't undo. Cara is his second chance, his chance to succeed where he failed before - if only she'll trust him enough to let him help her.

Cara needs to know what's happening, but the answer lies in a long forgotten past, and an ancient legend. To find it Cara will have to travel into the depths of Wales, and the heart of ancient Britain.

With Wraiths, creatures from the darkest of myths, dogging her every move, Cara knows it's only a matter of time before they catch up with her. And myth or not, they will kill her.

Her only hope is Lance, and the birth right she must claim, if she is to prevent the future she has foreseen.

I honestly believe that writing the cover blurb was ten times as hard as actually writing the novel!

I’m going to leave you today with a few links:

Follow me on Twitter - @NSDorrington

Like THE LAST KNIGHT on Facebook - THE LAST KNIGHT

Or add it to your shelf on Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18048103-the-last-knight

Book Cover!

Time for this week’s teaser – and this time it’s something a little different. With just 23 days left until THE LAST KNIGHT goes on sale I have finally gotten my cover art work finalised, thanks to my wonderful sister and my brother-in-law who put this together.

I am incredibly happy with it – it feels just right for the book – and I am still hoping one day to see it on  proper hardcopy version.

But for now, here it is.